Well, this is either incredibly sad or utterly hilarious. Apple will stop selling the Mac Pro in Europe on 1 March... Because it doesn't comply with "new" European regulations that will come into effect that day. I say "new" between quotation marks because said regulation was announced four years ago. The regulation deals with increased protection requirements concerning electrical ports and fan guards. "The new requirements necessitate fan guards and some increased protection on the ports on the electrical system," explained Apple, "Because Mac Pro is not compliant with the regulations, we do want to meet that regulation and therefore not offer Mac Pro beyond 1 March." So, a standards body is faster at updating its standards than Apple is at updating its Mac Pro. It illustrates just how much Apple cares about pro users. The last significant update to the Mac Pro occurred in 2010, but Tim Cook did promise an update to the product later in 2013.

It really is astonishing that there are still people in this world - in the US, no less! - who believe regulation to be a bad thing. It's as though caution and the idea of learning from one's mistakes are things to be crushed wherever they're encountered.

We are utterly doomed as a species.

It really is astonishing that there are still people in this world who believe that government can competently regulate anything other than collection of taxes and blowing shit up with weaponry. Seriously, government bureaucrats in the US issue dozens of regulations a day, and a lot of them are geared at protecting market cronyism (driving up the costs of competitors that that existing players can hold onto markets), bad (or no) science, arbitrary exercises of power, support of secondary markets that the government wants to prop up (green energy), increased taxation, and well-meaning mental retardation.

I'm not saying that ALL regulation is bad. But a lot of it is, and doesn't serve the public good. And there's nothing wrong with questioning authority. You have an obligation as a thinking adult not to abdicate all moral authority to the government. They're flawed human beings, just like the rest of us, and need watchdogs.